Imagine a world without Grand Theft Auto………..such a world nearly came about.
Ex-DMA Designs developer Gary Penn, worked on the original beloved top down GTA back in the 1990s.
Penn told Gamasutra that GTA was nearly ‘canned’ because there were two main issues with the game.
“There are probably two key things it fell down on. Two critical things. One of them is stability, which is a really boring one but it crashed all the fucking time,” said Penn.
“So even if you did get something in the game, you couldn’t really test it. The designers couldn’t test stuff out or try things out, it just kept crashing as simple as that. That was a boring one, but that was pivotal — so that was the first step to get that knocked out.”
Car handling was another huge development headache…..but then they realized that there was more to the game than these flaws.
“One day, I think it was a bug, the police suddenly became mental and aggressive. It was because they were trying to drive through you,” he said.
“Their route finding was screwed I think and that was an awesome moment because suddenly the real drama where, ‘Oh my God, the police are psycho — they’re trying to ram me off the road. That was awesome, so that stayed in.”
The rest, as they say, is videogame history…..
